


When You Have To Go There

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Post-Movie(s), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-05
Updated: 2011-09-05
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1529195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cobb goes home, Arthur is happy for him, but that's the end of their partnership.  (A post-film character study of Arthur, plus random thoughts on the extraction business.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Have To Go There

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the 9/5/11 [15_minute_fic](http://15_minute_fic.livejournal.com) word #196.

Extraction doesn't have to be an international business. There are quite a lot of dream thieves who make a respectable -- or even luxurious -- living within a single metropolitan area. They know the environment, they know the local law enforcement, they know all the dashes of local flavor an out-of-town team might miss when building a dream.

The thing is, though, Arthur is easily bored.

Most people don't expect that from him. He's perfectly upfront about liking things done just so, everything in its proper place. He keeps himself tidy and professionally dressed. His job involves interminable hours sorting through reams of probably irrelevant data in search of the few items that can make or break a job, even spell life or death if something goes awry.

That's different. The work has a purpose. The clothes suit his sense of aesthetics. The organization is only good sense; how can you leave in a heartbeat if you don't know in your sleep exactly what to take, what to destroy, and what can be ignored?

Staying in one place for more than a few months, though. Well. Arthur spent eighteen years in a dying town in northern Minnesota, whose only claim to fame was its proximity to a few rundown lake resorts. He got out and never stopped running.

Nobody notices his itchy feet, of course. Anyone who might remark on his endless travels, his lack of roots, instantly ascribes it to the hierarchy of dreamwork. Because while you _can_ make a good living in one place, while that's probably the sanest choice you can make in an inherently unbalanced profession, there's no prestige in growing fat and lazy and practically advertising for clients. The real talent lies in making clients ask for you, and pay you to come to them.

When Cobb goes home, Arthur is happy for him. They've worked together for years, long before the catastrophe of Limbo and Mal's all-too-rational insanity. Arthur is the children's godfather; he was the one who visited with presents and brought videos and homemade gifts -- popsicle sticks and crayon pictures -- back for Cobb to obsess over.

But that's the end of their partnership. Cobb only traveled from necessity, not from native desire. And that's okay. Arthur can work on his own, like he did before he met Mal, when she declared him adorable and brought him under her wing no matter how much he laughed and protested and told her he didn't need a big sister to watch over him. He's good enough that people will come to him, or jump to fill out his team when he offers them a job. He can keep moving as long as he wants -- a new team and a new job in every city, never the same buildings or faces twice.

The thing is, though, Arthur gets lonely.

He stands in the airport, watching the planes take off and land, until he's deliberately missed his connecting flight to St. Louis. He searches on his phone and buys a seat on a flight to the Twin Cities instead, and another up north to Duluth. He can drive to his mother's house from there.

He won't stay long. He still can't stand to feel trapped in any single place, and he doubts he and his mother have much to talk about after more than a decade of silence, but he thinks, after rewriting a man's life from the ground up, it's a good idea to remind himself how he built himself into who he is now -- boredom, loneliness and all.

After a week or two, he thinks he might call Ariadne and Eames and see if their feet are itchy too.


End file.
